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We did the airbnb when we moved across country and it worked very well. We weren’t sure how long it would take us to buy a house since the market was hot. An apartment would have locked in a lease for a certain number of months–and most apartments didn’t even offer short leases or if they did, there was a large increase in rent. Plus, most wanted proof of W-2 type income. And there were initiation fees and then all of the fees to set up utilities. We stayed with an Airbnb superhost and they were fantastic and really helped us with advice about the area and we had use of the kitchen, laundry, pool which was wonderful. This airbnb also offered a 50% discount on monthly rentals so the cost was very reasonable.
We put eBay on hold during the move and had a fire sale ahead of the move and donated a lot of lower end inventory that didn’t seem worth the cost and effort of moving. Which was a good idea in hindsight since there are more than enough sourcing options in the new location–it just is taking time to list these new death piles!
Good luck on your move!
Thanks for the reply. Do you know how to refund more money than was paid via Paypal? If I recall correctly, it usually just has the total price plus original shipping and then I’ve always either typed in this total amount or less for a partial refund–I’ve never tried to refund more than the Paypal total amount. Once I refund through eBay, I think it would zero out the amount.
I did an exchange once. I accidentally sent the wrong item. If I remember correctly, when the buyer opened a case, there was an option for me to select an exchange. I paid for the return shipping since it was my fault. Ebay tracked the returned shipping and then tracked my shipment of the exchanged item.
I print to an 8 1/2 x 11. I did find a solve with the new page. Instead of directly printing, I need to download it, then I’m able to shrink it. Thank!
Re science: Nutritional science, because of ethics, is one of the hardest disciplines for scientists to get good, accurate data–and without good data, it is more challenging for the scientists to develop good hypotheses. The good thing about science, though, is more and more data gets collected and the whole point of science is to challenge previously held hypotheses with new data, to keep getting improved hypotheses.
There are very strict regulations-which is a good thing!–around conducting experiments on people, so most nutritional studies start with animals. From a data standpoint, the good thing is that diet can be controlled, but the bad thing from a data standpoint is that results in animal models sometimes aren’t good predictions for how people will respond.
And when human nutritional studies are done, there are often major challenges/problems with the data. Scientists can’t lock people in a room and control their diet and exercise, so there is reliance on self-reporting and trusting that people will follow a diet & lifestyle. But there is a lot of evidence that people either don’t remember or lie when they self-report their diet. And also, unfortunately, people don’t always follow a controlled diet that they’ve been assigned to even if they report that they are.
And for finding nutritional links to long term disease requires following people in a study for decades–which is expensive and time consuming and again–there is no ethical way to confirm absolutely that the people in the study are really eating what they say they are over a decades long study.
Often, the media will report on attention-grabbing results of an animal study or of a short-term, small, poorly controlled human study. Then when more data and evidence comes out that contradicts the original early media report, understandably the public gets angry with science/scientists. But please remember when you see nutritional media reports, that all studies are not created equal. Long term, well controlled studies, double-blind, with a placebo variable are often not the ones reported on.
With regard to the butter and saturated fat issue–this actually is a whole other can of worms. There was a lot of human sins of greed and ego that helped drive this–not just data. There’s an interesting laymans’s article in the New York Times on How the Sugar Industry Shifted the Blame to Fat and also an even better article that give the history is in the Guardian titled The Sugar Conspiracy which really goes into depth on the career climbing personalities & egos of the people who bull-headed this hypothesis through. Data is neutral but people are not always. Interestingly, even in the 80’s and 90’s there was still contradictory data that was even given its own name–The French Paradox, since the French diet was very high in saturated fat with low disease. Again, data is neutral but relies on people to correctly analyze it and media to report it in proper context–which doesn’t always happen
Also–I’ve created about 30 listings in the same time period that didn’t duplicate and were normal
Yes, the e-mail broke down the buyer category responses they were counting in a chart and doesn’t work/defective and arrived damaged were both there along with doesn’t match description or photos, wrong item sent, doesn’t seem authentic, missing parts/pieces. For several, I had zero of the response type but I did have a few defective (I’m pretty sure these were a few Dansko shoes with the rubber sole disintegrating upon wear–lesson learned to be cautious with this brand)
I did receive the e-mail from eBay saying that my INAD percentage is too high compared to other sellers in clothing/shoes category (though at 1.76%, I was a little surprised. I guess I should have spent time to call in to dispute some INADs). But it isn’t clear how the fee will be assessed–will it just be on an INAD item, will it be on all items in the seller’s store, all items in the category? I have 0 returns or INADS in the jewelry category–will these items suddenly get an extra 4% fee because eBay thinks I have too many in Clothing category?
In the clothing, shoes, and accessories category–For INAD, I assume the peer result of 0.62% is from both new and used sellers. I really didn’t think I had high returns or INAD but according to an e-mail I just got from eBay, at 1.76%, my account is very high and will be subject to an extra 4% fee starting October 1st unless I take action.
I just can’t figure out how my peers in this category have such a low %, unless sellers of new items just have very low % and skew the category average.
For those going to eBay open, please ask if they are going to hold used clothing/shoes sellers to the same return/INAD % as new item sellers.
That sounds like the ultimate manufactured spend 🙂 I think you used to be able to something similar with the US treasury–both coins and bonds, but they changed it. And it used to be pretty easy to buy visa and mastercard gift cards with a credit card (if using a 4x office category credit card and during one of the frequent gift card sales at the various office supply stores–you usually would be making money even after the fee) and then use a Target redcard account or a Walmart serve account to load the gift cards and then transfer the funds to your bank account or directly pay off the credit card. But these days are no more.
Also, some less crazy tactics that people into this use to earn points are that airlines and hotels often run promotions that give bonus points. Sometimes they had it so you could earn points for just doing simple social media stuff (like us on Facebook) with a series of activities that would boost the promotion points. Radisson, a number of years ago, ran a promotion where you could earn massive points for staying at any of their hotels a certain number of times. You could do something like, book two nights at a room at a low end, cheap local Park Inn for $50 a night and earn enough points for 1 night at a Radisson Blu in Paris. Unfortunately, that particular promotion has never come back around as far as I know. But there usually are some promotions going on–you can usually earn more bonuses if you are working and have work travel to help you meet some of the promotion requirements.
Also, many credit cards will offer retention bonuses when you try to cancel. There is a thread in that same Flyertalk.com subforum on Credit Cards where people post data points on which card they tried to cancel and what retention bonus offer–if any–was offered. Warning–if you really don’t want to cancel, be careful with your language during the phone call so you don’t actually get your card cancelled.
One addition about business class flights to Europe, American did recently change their mileage chart from a flat rate to more of a dynamic model so it is not as easy to always find the base mileage rate. I think most other airlines still have a flat mileage rate but I haven’t kept up with recent changes. Plus American is usually not the best choice for mileage awards to Europe since they almost always try to route you through London and the UK assesses a surcharge of hundreds to thousands of dollars on mileage flights. So if you are looking to book a mileage award to Europe, avoid flying to and from US to UK.
Even without manufactured spend, it is still feasible to get enough points/miles for a trip to Europe in business class pretty easily. Get a Chase Sapphire Preferred — sign up bonus is usually 50,000 point but occasionally goes to 60,000, so sign up when it is 55,000 or 60,000 (sometimes you can get 5000 points by adding an authorized user like your significant other). Then get a Chase Ink business card for another 50,000 to 60,000 points. Both cards are on the Ultimate Rewards point system so these points transfer to pretty much all major airlines or hotels. Get the cards when you have big projects or inventory buys so you can handle the $3000-5000 spend in usually 3 months (so likely get cards sequentially and not at the same time). Both cards have bonus categories of 2x-5x for actual spend so with the two sign up bonuses and the points from the spend, this covers most round trip tickets in business class to Europe.
The people who have the blogs and are racking up massive points/miles by lots and lots of credit card applications are usually are doing some combination of manufactured spend, mileage runs (buying and flying on a cheap flight that will earn a lot of miles just for the purpose of earning the miles), or retail arbitrage to get the spend. It is crazy reading about some of the tactics.
